The November Pogrom ("Kristallnacht")

On 27 October 1938, Nazi Germany carried out the brutal eviction of Jews with Polish citizenship. SS men drove children, the elderly and the sick across the Polish border; most of them were concentrated in abandoned stables near the border town of Zbąszyń, Poland. The deportation to Zbąszyń was directly connected with the November Pogrom, a violent anti-Jewish attack that took place on 9-10 November 1938. While Nazi propaganda claimed that the pogrom was a spontaneous outburst, in reality it had been planned and implemented by the Nazi leadership. During the pogrom 91 Jews were murdered, more than 1,400 synagogues across Germany and Austria were torched, and Jewish-owned shops and businesses were plundered and destroyed. The Jews were forced to pay “compensation” for the damage that had been caused and approximately 30,000 Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps.

Online Exhibition

The November Pogrom ("Kristallnacht")

9-10 November 1938

An online exhibition presenting the November Pogrom through photographs, objects and testimonies

Excerpts from "German-Jewish Life on the Eve of World War II": Uri ben Ari and Prof. Walter (Zvi) Bacharach

A pair of silver Torah finials with the inscription: “Donated by Jakob and Bertha Weinschenk” that were stolen during the Kristallnacht pogrom and returned to their descendants sixty years later

Plundered Torah Finials Restored

That was the heart of the problem of German Jewry: It was so much a part of German society that the Nazi blow hit it from within. Until 1938 my parents never thought of leaving Germany.
Prof. Zvi Bacharach

Spotlight

November 9/10, 1938, A synagogue in flames in Siegen, Germany, during Kristallnacht

A synagogue in flames in Siegen, Germany, during the November Pogrom, 9-10 November 1938

November 1938, Jews who have been deported by the Germans to the border town of Zbąszyń, Poland

Jews who were deported by the Germans to the border town of Zbąszyń, Poland, November 1938

November 9-10, 1938, Jews under arrest paraded at Oldenburg, Germany, during Kristallnacht

Jews under arrest paraded at Oldenburg, Germany, during the November Pogrom, 9-10 November 1938

German Jews with Polish citizenship deported to the Polish border town of Zbąszyń

October 1938

November 1938, Herschel Grynszpan under arrest in Paris, France

Herschel Grynszpan under arrest in Paris, France, November 1938

Video Testimonies

Marga Randall: the November Pogrom in a small German town

Ehud Loeb: the November Pogrom in the city of Buehl

Arnold Goldschmidt: the November Pogrom in the city of Fulda

The November Pogrom in the city of Würzburg

Reading Corner

Terrified and injured Jewish people during the Kristallnacht riots, 10/11/1938, Nuremberg, Germany

Blog

Kristallnacht or the November Pogrom?

Jonathan Matthews

5 min.

Article

In Memory of our Destroyed Synagogues in Germany

Eliad Moreh-Rosenberg , Yehudit Shendar

4 min.

The November Pogrom in Würzburg

12 min.

Description of the Riot at Dinslaken

Yitzhak S. Herz

7 min.

Educational Materials

Koenigsbach, Germany, November 10, 1938, the interior of a destroyed synagogue after Kristallnacht

Holocaust memorial ceremony

Remembering the November Pogrom ("Kristallnacht"), 1938

7-9 grades

25 min

Baden Baden, Germany - arrest of Jews by the SS on Kristallnacht

Newsletter for Educators

70 Years since the November Pogrom ("Kristallnacht")

December 2008

From the Yad Vashem Artifacts Collection

Torah scroll from the Broder synagogue, Leipzig, Germany

Torah scroll saved in the November Pogrom ("Kristallnacht") in Leipzig

Children's Books that belonged to Ruth Rosenberg

Book that a Jewish mother took for her baby when they escaped Germany

Online Store

The Nuremberg Trial in Yad Vashem Studies, Volume V

The Crucial Year: 1938, Yad Vashem Studies, Volume II

Joseph Tenenbaum

1938 was the year during which Jews finally realized that emigration was the only alternative to annihilation, and the year the Germans became convinced that the Jewish question could not be solved by emigration alone.

3.50

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The November Pogrom in Berlin, Yad Vashem Studies, Volume III

Kurt Jacob Ball-Kaduri

What happened at that time in the central Jewish organizations in Berlin? Very little knowledge on this subject is available. The collections of Ball-Kaduri (1944-1947) in the Yad Vashem Archives and that of Yad Vashem (1956-1958) throw some light on this subject.

3.50

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